Thursday, July 2, 2009

American priests got investigated by the Vatican for child sexual abuse--and now American nuns are facing scrutiny.

Their crimes?

1) Advocating that the priesthood be opened to women and to married men.2) Using Reiki therapy.3) Being too uppity.

The specific target is the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, an umbrella organization with membership from 95% of women's religious orders in the US. This group famously asked Sr. Theresa Kane to speak out to Pope John Paul II when he visited the US in 1979, asking him to reconsider women's ordination.

The prosecuting group? Yes, the good old Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith--which ran the Inquisition a few hundred years ago.

Read all about it on the front page of today's New York Times or at this internet address:

Featured Post

In memory of Martha Puebla & In honor of Maria Riveros

On a spring night in 2003, Martha Puebla, age 16, was shot in the face while sitting outside her home in Sun Valley, California, near Los Angeles. Her death was ordered by a gang member on trial for a murder she had witnessed.

On July 13, 2008, in San Ignacio, Paraguay, Maria Riveros took her pregnant 16-year-old daughter to the home of an obstetrician and asked her to perform an abortion. The fetus of about 4 mo. was buried outside the home, but there were complications and the next day Maria had to rush her daughter to a hospital, where a hysterectomy was performed. The obstetrician and her daughter, a nurse, were arrested and charged with performing an abortion.

This blog is dedicated to Martha, Maria and all women who courageously negotiate their lives in this world filled with gang warfare and international warfare, poverty and wealth, drug trafficking and addiction, and lack of access to birth control, legal abortion, and other health care.